Sunday, December 30, 2007

This story has been around for a few months, but resurfaced again today in the New York Times. A student teacher was denied her education degree from Millersvile University because of a photo she posted on myspace.com and she captioned the photo "drunken pirate". The photo can be viewed on this New York Times page.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Pennsylvania Attorney General, Tom Corbett is interested in educating our children about being safe online. He has established a task force to fight predators and you can help. Visit his website for information to help you become educated too.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

This site is getting great reviews from teachers who are showing the video to their middle school students. The links offer good advice. I don't think you can have enough advice on this topic! I will try to order this movie for our school and let you know when it arrives if you wish to view it.

Friday, December 21, 2007

In a New York Times article by David Progue, he writes about how the youngest generation views copying others material as just fine. There seems to be a strong feeling that anything that is produced, audio, video, written or otherwise is fair game if you can figure out how to beat the copyright schemes on the media. He offers several examples during a talk to college students about copyright infringement, but they don't see it that way! For the full article, click HERE.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

According to a report done by The Pew Research and American Life Project:

"Think that user generated content is still only the domain of a relatively small few? Well a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that the next generation at least is switched on and producing content.

According to the study, 59% of all American teenagers engage in at least one form of online content creation. Of those 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys however like their video, with 19% of boys posting video online vs. 10% of girls.

Other figures from the study:

39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos

33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments

28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.

27% maintain their own personal webpage

26% remix content they find online into their own creations

Interestingly the presumed dominance of social networking sites (such as Facebook and MySpace) amongst teens was not reflected in the study, which found that only 55% of teens online use a social networking site. The flip side to that is that the presumption that sites such as MySpace may have peaked may be untrue if 45% of teens aren’t using one of these sites already.

Citation: Lenheart, Amanda, et al. "Teens and Social Media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media." Pew Internet and American Life Project. 19 Dec. 2007. Pew Charitable Trusts, Pew Research. 20 Dec. 2007 .

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Last evening, December 12, 2007, I had the pleasure to attend a program sponsored by my local school district about Internet Safety. The speaker was nationally recognized, Katie Koestner from Campus Outreach Services. Her talk not only educated the audience about the pitfalls of today's technology abuses, but scared many of them to go home and toss out all electronic devices!! Only kidding there, but it made me take a serious look at several things and you should too!

Where is your computer located?

Does your student have a cell phone with a camera? can it take video? Why?

Where is the cell phone when they go to bed? Where does it charge?

Have you ever seen the photos on your child's phone? the movies?

Do you have filtering and monitoring software for your home computer?

Do you have a laptop that your student uses? Where do they use it?

Have you ever sat and watched YouTube with your kids? Have them show you their favorite videos.

You should "Google Yourself and your kids" to see what information is out there on the web.

Teenagers listen to over 10,500 hours of music by the time they are 16. What is influencing them?

I found out that information your child posts on myspace.com or facebook.com or many of the other social networking sites actually 'becomes the property of the site"! That is why Rupert Murdoch has paid over $550 million for myspace.com - content! If you have a budding artist, songwriter, actor, or writer, and they post their material on their own blog, the company then owns it! There is no payout for their intellectual property, myspace.com just keeps it and can publish it for their own profit.